Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter – Issue # 124

Welcome to the Mandriva Linux Community Newsletter – dedicated to
keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandriva-related news & info.
Inside this Issue:

* Top Story – Mandriva Flash released, sells out!
* Mandriva News – Mandriva Goodies store open for business
* Mandriva in the news – Mandriva Linux 2007 reviews
* Mandriva Security – Updates, updates and more updates

Top Story
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Mandriva Flash released, sells out!

It’s been a while since we’ve introduced an entirely new Mandriva
product, but now’s the time! We’re proud to bring you news of
Mandriva Flash. Mandriva Flash is a full Mandriva Linux distribution
on a high-quality 2GB USB storage key from Dane-Elec. You can carry
it with you and boot it on any computer you come across that’s
capable of running Mandriva, either directly from the key or with the
help of a provided boot CD if the computer does not support booting
from a USB key. Flash is based on Mandriva Linux 2007 and provides
all the features of that release, including 3D desktop acceleration
on supported hardware. Since the key is writeable, in contrast to
live CDs, you can store your own configuration and data, and you can
install additional packages and updates to customize Flash to your
needs and keep it secure! You can read more about Flash on the
product page, and buy it from the Mandriva Store – but you’ll have to
wait a little while, as it’s proved so popular that we’ve sold all our
stock! New shipments are arriving weekly, though, so if you place an
order now your Flash shouldn’t take too long to arrive.

http://mandriva.com/linux/2007/flash
http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?products_id=277

Mandriva News
—————————————-
Mandriva Goodies store open for business

Have you ever felt there’s something missing in your life? Sure, you
have a nice house / apartment / cosy cardboard box, a nice car / nice
bicycle / fully equipped shopping cart, and a beautiful wife / husband
/ partner / dog, but still, every morning you wake up feeling a little
pang of emptiness inside?
Well, we know what it is you’ve been missing: a Mandriva mug! And a
Mandriva baseball cap, t-shirt, and thong (for your beautiful wife.
Or, hey, for your beautiful husband or dog. We’re not judging you.)
Yes, you can now buy Mandriva-themed clothing, cookware, wall clocks,
mouse mats, calendars and even a teddy bear at our brand new Cafepress
store. Jump to it. And remember, the main Mandriva Store is still the
place to buy Mandriva Linux distributions, pre-loaded hardware,
e-training and, most importantly, giant Tux plush dolls!

http://www.cafepress.com/mandriva
http://store.mandriva.com
http://store.mandriva.com/product_info.php?products_id=222&osCsid=68ea2ac92fbb0e82342d7215d7171cfc

Mandriva Linux 2007 and Corporate Server 4 box sets available

Following the Mandriva Club and download releases, the boxed editions
of Mandriva Linux 2007 and Corporate Server 4 are now available from
the Mandriva Store. The boxed editions of Mandriva Linux 2007 come
with manuals and services including trial membership of the Mandriva
Club and the Mandriva Expert technical assistance service. Corporate
Server 4 is available with either one, three or five years of bundled
maintenance, and includes one month of unlimited phone support and one
year of unlimited email support.
Remember, Mandriva Linux 2007 is packed with cutting-edge Linux
technology, including KDE 3.5.4, GNOME 2.16, OpenOffice.org 2.0,
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and more. It also has the most comprehensive and
simplest support for 3D desktop acceleration, along with many other
innovative new features. Corporate Server 4 is a reliable and
comprehensive modern enterprise server solution featuring exclusive
integration with all three major virtualization solutions, OpenVT,
Xen and VMware.

http://store.mandriva.com

New Mandriva Linux 2007 software repositories available

Following the recent release of Mandriva Linux 2007, some new software
package repositories have been made available on the public mirror
sites. These are /contrib/testing , /contrib/updates ,
/main/backports and /contrib/backports . The first two now make it
easy for maintainers to produce and users to access bugfix and
security updates for the packages in the /contrib section of Mandriva
Linux. These packages are not officially supported by our security
team, but many packagers choose to provide updates themselves. The
/backports repositories form a new avenue for maintainers to produce
and for users to access updated versions of popular packages. You can
read more about these new repositories, what they contain and how to
use them in this Mandriva Club article.

http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/2007Media

Mandriva to attend Solutions Linux 2007 and FOSDEM 2007

Mandriva will be present at two high-profile industry events in early
2007, Solutions Linux and FOSDEM. Solutions Linux is the biggest
Linux event in France each year. Mandriva will have its own booth as
well as a presence on the booths of our business partners HP, Audaxis
and Arkeia. Solutions Linux will be held in Paris from January 30th to
February 1st, so come join us! More information is available (in
French) on the Solutions Linux website.
Mandriva will also have a major presence for the first time at
FOSDEM, one of the leading European free / open source software
conventions. The Mandriva development community will have its own
room, a great opportunity both to promote Mandriva and to do some
useful work on Mandriva Linux at the same time. There is a page on
the Mandriva wiki dedicated to planning for the event. If you have
trouble accessing the wiki, run this command first: sysctl -w
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 . If you’re involved in Mandriva
development or just interested, come and join us!

http://www.solutionslinux.fr/fr/index.php
http://www.fosdem.org/2007/
http://mdv.vmlinuz.ca/Community/Events/2007/Conference/Fosdem

Mandriva at Fanny’s Party

In October, Mandriva attended its first Fanny’s Party. Fanny’s Party
is a gathering of technology enthusiasts and technology companies
held every two months in Paris. The party is attended not only by
hundreds of enthusiasts but by industry and media representatives.
Our representatives at the party had a great time showing off
Mandriva Linux 2007’s features to the guests and the TV cameras! You
can see some pictures at Mandriva’s flickr page.

http://fannyb.typepad.com/fannysworld/2004/01/questce_que_la_.html
http://flickr.com/photos/mandriva/sets/72157594344199944/

Mandriva Linux 2007 videos

To celebrate the release of Mandriva Linux 2007 we asked our Mandriva
Club members to make or let us know about videos of its best
features, particularly the 3D desktop acceleration. They didn’t let
us down, and you can find some excellent videos showcasing the
capabilities of Mandriva Linux 2007 in this Club post.

http://club.mandriva.com/
http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/3d-video-links

Mandriva in the news
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Mandriva Linux 2007 reviews

There have been many reviews of Mandriva Linux 2007 published since it
was released. Here’s a trio of them. First up, linux.com entitled
their review Mandriva 2007: Back in the race, reflecting their view
that Mandriva Linux 2006 didn’t provide enough support for advanced
users. While we might disagree with their earlier opinions, we’re
happy to see that they enjoyed the 2007 release. They concluded that
“with its latest version, Mandriva returns attention to its software
development and re-establishes itself as a leading desktop
distribution that can give Ubuntu serious competition.”
Next up is linuxforums.org. Their review looks at the One combined
live CD / installer edition, in contrast to the other two reviews
which focussed on Powerpack. They go through the major new features
of 2007 before concluding that “this release is a real sign that
they’re back as one of the major Linux distributions.”
Finally there’s Software in Review, where Jem Matzan of The Jem
Report gives his verdict, running through a few problems he
encountered before concluding that “Mandriva PowerPack Edition fits a
unique niche: it makes your operating environment easy to use and
configure without treating you like you’re a moron. So I switched.”
Convinced yet? If you’re ready to update to Mandriva Linux 2007, you
can buy your copy at the Store, download it from the Mandriva Club as
a member, or download it for free from the download page.

http://distrocenter.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/31/1428232
http://www.linuxforums.org/reviews/mandriva_2007_review.html
http://www.softwareinreview.com
http://www.thejemreport.com
http://store.mandriva.com
http://club.mandriva.com
http://www.mandriva.com/en/download

Thoughts on Mandriva’s future

A long-time user of Mandriva Linux, Rich Hughes, has written a
perceptive and thoughtful analysis of Mandriva and Mandriva Linux
which has been well received and discussed both within the Mandriva
community and within Mandriva itself. We’re grateful to Rich for his
thoughts and we definitely recommend every Mandriva user should read
his article.

http://www.linuxtechdaily.com/2006/11/editorial-thoughts-on-mandrivas-future/

The voices of Mandriva

Not content with just reviewing Mandriva Linux 2007, Jem Matzan hung
around outside our staff members’ houses annoying our pets and
disturbing the neighbours until we gave in and agreed to answer some
interview questions for him. In the article, you’ll find answers from
Helio Chissini de Castro (one of our KDE developers), Warly (our
release manager, mirror manager and general-purpose superhero) and
your humble editor to a few questions on Mandriva and open source
software in general.

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/287/

Mandriva Security
—————————————-
Updates, updates and more updates

As always, we remind you to keep your Mandriva Linux installation
fully up to date to keep it secure and bug-free. Since the last issue
of the newsletter, updates have been issued for the kernel, openssh,
rpm and php along with other important packages. There have also been
significant bugfixes for webmin, the menu system, gnuplot and more.
Also, as mentioned above, a /updates repository is now available for
the contrib section of Mandriva Linux, which does not benefit from
official security updates issued by our security team. These updates
are not guaranteed and are issued by the package maintainers, but
they also help resolve security issues and bugs. You can read about
the available contrib updates and how to install them in the Mandriva
Linux 2007 Errata page. If you have difficulty accessing this page,
run this command first: sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 .

Remember, use Mandriva Update to download and install your updated
packages. The Mandriva Online update notification and automatic
installation service is unfortunately not working with Mandriva Linux
2007 at the moment: we are working on resolving this problem as soon
as we can. Until then, we recommend you use Mandriva Update directly,
as explained here.

http://wiki.mandriva.com/Releases/Mandriva/2007/Errata
http://wiki.mandriva.com/Releases/Mandriva/2007/Errata#Installing_Updates